The Best Love In The World

[Ezekiel Tulagan]

Aswe celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his national holiday, I find myself reflecting on his deep commitment to transformative love. A revolutionary love found in Christ Jesus. Many times when Dr. King wanted to provide a picture of the ultimate goal of the Civil Rights Movement he would refer to the beloved community. The beloved community was the banner under which both American and global citizens across race and class could collectively experience equality, justice, and reconciliation. The realization of this beloved community would include transformative love and nonviolent resistance.

Dr. King indeed waged a war against injustice, oppression, and inequality, but he did so through the weapons of prayer, economic boycotts, freedom songs, preaching, and peaceful marches. He took this strategy of love and nonviolence and these unusual weapons into the heat of militarized police forces, angry and racist mobs, and a dominant Christian Church that in many ways stood on the sidelines in disagreement of his methods. This aspect of the broader Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King was missional. It was missional because redemption and reconciliation were woven into the fabric of the movement. It was also the theological foundation of it. He indeed had both liberation and conversion on his mind and heart as he served as a drum major for justice.

He waged a war using love with the hope of defeating the weapons of violence used to deal with racial conflict and resistance to racial oppression. To understand this is to understand the true ends of the Civil Rights Movement at its best. The missional dynamic of this part of the Civil Rights Movement was focused on the liberation of the oppressed, the conversion of the oppressor, and the empowerment of the poor. This all seems Gospel-like. The problem is, some parts of evangelicalism have instead tried to make this Gospel-light by describing it only as an example of the social gospel. But to limit this part of the movement in this way or even to use the term social gospel to rip justice work away from the declaration and demonstration of the Kingdom of God is to deeply misunderstand the Gospel itself.

Yet today, we are living in a time of racial conflict, violence as the primary means to solve conflict in general, and a widening gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. We need a new dose of a collective, church based movement with transformative and eternal ends in mind. There are still people who are in need of liberation and empowerment. There are still people who need a second conversion because though they claim Christ, they are held captive by the matrix of race. There is still a need for the Kingdom of God to come to bear upon injustice, violence, and division so that there may be a greater experience of authentic truth, justice, and transformation. Our weapon of choice is the revolutionary love found in Christ Jesus. This weapon was good enough for Dr. King and still available for us today.

Astrocartography is a tool developed by Jim Lewis that can show us where specific energies are contained for us in the world. It all depends on your birth info, which I explained in my introduction to astrocartography post. Some places in the world are more supportive and other challenging. Your astrocartography map can show you where you will find more career success, good luck and abundance, spiritual connection, love and romance, and even the perfect place to settle down and retire.

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When we look at at our astrocartography map, we also have to consider timing. Booking a vacation or move to be in alignment with a beneficial time in your life is more helpful and we can find the more positive and supportive times for us by looking at our transits and zodiacal releasing.

In a world where demands for our time and attention is constant, many Christians find themselves torn between the choices of either studying their Bibles or reading some inspirational Christian literature.

The Rhapsody of Realities Devotional Study Bible offers a solution to this challenge in its compact package that combines features of the most important book on earth The Holy Bible and the best-selling daily devotional, Rhapsody of Realities to produce an exceptional Study Bible.

Relationships are an inevitable part of being alive. And so developing a strong inner core while learning how to develop healthy, long-lasting relationships are keys to leading happy, fulfilling lives.

1) We share the same dream. When Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the elements polonium and radium, the latter gave up his own research to support the process of having the elements officially recognized. The stage of their groundbreaking endeavors was a drafty shed that Marie later described as the place where they spent the best years of their lives.[3]

When we uphold a common vision for what kind of people we want to be and what type of family and society we want to create, that vision enables us to always move forward, mutually inspiring one another, sharing our joys and sorrows along the way.

As Soka Gakkai Buddhists, the ultimate dream we share is kosen-rufu, that is, to spread widely the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and thereby elevate the life state of humanity. When we live with this pledge at our core, we can transform even the most painful circumstances into the fuel for value and victory.

2) The love we possess is boundless. Falling in love can be exhilarating, filling our days with a drama and excitement that are normally absent from daily life. Sometimes, however, couples can build an island, where without the other, neither is complete. If, as a result, we veer from our chosen path, Sensei explains that love becomes mere escapism.[5]

Buddhism teaches that just like all our other qualities, the love we possess is boundless; it equates to the Buddhist ideal of compassion. Rather than view this as a limited resource to be shared sparingly, authentic love powers our commitment to support others and enables us to grow ever more human in the process. Sensei elaborates:

3) We can grow together. Having a partner in life can bring us great meaning and fulfillment. The question we should ask is whether our partner inspires us to be better or distracts from our growth.

Around this time, my mother mentioned words of wisdom that Ikeda Sensei often quotes about how true love is two people looking ahead in the same direction. Throughout my relationship with my ex, I had constantly put him on a pedestal, seeking validation from him. I soon realized that I needed to love myself first and believe in myself if I were to attract someone who would offer me the love and respect I deserved.

In chanting for this fellowship, I battled strong doubts that I would get it. It got to the point where I was just begging the Gohonzon to give me what I wanted, rather than believing in the power of my own life.

Courtly Love (Amour Courtois) refers to an innovative literary genre of poetry of the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 CE) which elevated the position of women in society and established the motifs of the romance genre recognizable in the present day. Courtly love poetry featured a lady, usually married but always in some way inaccessible, who became the object of a noble knight's devotion, service, and self-sacrifice. Prior to the development of this genre, women appear in medieval literature as secondary characters and their husbands' or fathers' possessions; afterward, women feature prominently in literary works as clearly defined individuals in the works of authors such as Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Thomas Malory.

Scholars continue to debate whether the literature reflected actual romantic relationships of the upper class of the time or was only a literary conceit. Some scholars have also suggested that the poetry was religious allegory relating to the heresy of the Catharism, which, persecuted by the Church, spread its beliefs through popular poetry while others claim it represents superficial games of the medieval French courts. No consensus has been reached on which of these theories is correct, but scholars do agree that this kind of poetry was unprecedented in medieval Europe and coincided with an idealization of women. The poetry was quite popular in its time, contributed to the development of the Arthurian Legend, and standardized the central concepts of the western ideal of romantic love.

The term itself dates back only to 1883 CE when Gaston Paris coined the phrase Amour Courtois to describe Lancelot's love for Guinevere in the romance Lancelot (c. 1177 CE) by Chretien de Troyes. Medieval literature employs a variety of terms for this kind of love. In Provencal the word is cortezia (courtliness), French texts use fin amour (refined love), in Latin the term is amor honestus (honorable, reputable love). (Lindahl et. al., 80)

In the world of courtly love, on the other hand, women were free to choose their own partner and exercised complete control over him. Whether this world reflected a social reality or was simply a romantic literary construct continues to be debated in the present day and central to that question is the figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Throughout her marriage to Louis VII (1137-1152 CE), Eleanor filled her court with poets and artists. When their marriage was annulled in 1152 CE, Eleanor did the same at her own court in Normandy, where she was especially entertained by the young troubadour Bernard de Ventadour (12th century CE), one of the greatest medieval poets, who would follow her to the court of Henry II in 1152 CE and remain with her there three years, probably as her lover.

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